Meet the OPPO Reno, 5G version arriving in May

Today OPPO has taken the wraps off that were still laid on their new Reno line of phones with a few surprises and a lot of what we already expected.

Due to my Chinese being a bit rusty I had to watch along and wait until OPPO announced the specs on their Weibo page – and boy did they give us a lot of detail.

Presented by Shen Yiren Brian, the very same VP who leaked a lot of the information we already know, of course he went over all the OPPO specifics such as having more than 250 million users in over 40 countries in just 10 years of existence. This year they will spend over 10 billion RMB (~AU$2billion) on 5G, AI, imaging, cloud and new materials.

Getting to the new phone itself, the Reno is designed as a single 3D piece of glass with no camera bump. All the rear camera lenses and logo are along the back of the phone, aiding in its aesthetics.

Speaking of the camera, this is where the Reno is set to shine. It has a 10x lossless optical hybrid zoom lens creating some amazing photos. The rear camera system sports a 48MP lens, an 8MP super-wide-angled lens and the 13MP periscope telephoto lens. This all creates a focal length from 16 to 160mm. The periscope lens and the 48MP lens both have OIS to help create a stable super zoom picture.

Introducing Ultra Clear Night 2.0, the Reno uses the Sony 48MP lens to create great pictures even in low light with AI helping to create a natural skin tone in any light. The camera supports 4K 60fps with OIS along with the amazing photographic images.

All eyes were on the front facing camera with the side-swinging, angled fin being tested over 200,000 times. Inside the fin is the 16MP front facing camera with flash, earpiece, rear flash and more. Flipping out only 11 degrees in 0.8 seconds OPPO say that the sliding is elegant with a great design sense. For those worried about dropping the phone while the fin is out the Reno has an “intelligent drop protection” that will close the lens if it feels the phone being dropped.

The display on the Pro version is a decent 6.6 inch display with, as already known, 93.1 screen to body ratio. The chin bezel is just 3.5mm on the pro and 3.4mm on the standard Reno which arrives with a 6.4 inch display. The displays are 2nd gen AMOLED displays protected by Gorilla Glass 6.

Under the display is the optical in-display fingerprint sensor with the unlocking speed increased by nearly a third at 28.5%.

Of course many of you will be asking about the software. As expected it will run ColorOS 6 which brings an entirely redesigned Android skin to OPPO phones. We will of course look forward to testing that out to see how far they have come with improving what was once the worst Android skin in the world.

Other things included are an NFC chip, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-c dual frequency GPS, Hi-Res Dolby audio speakers, HDR support, their new Game Boost 2.0 which includes touch boost and frame boost acceleration, thermal gel, graphite sheet and copper tube liquid cooling and an ability to monitor 4G and Wi-Fi congestion in real time to control better network connection and speeds.

The battery in the pro version is a whopping 4056mAh (standard is 3765mAh) and uses the new VOOC 3.0 to reduce charging times even more by 23.8% – OPPO already have the fastest charging we have ever tried here at Ausdroid.

As expected the phone will arrive in four colours “taken from nature”, black night, misty sea green, mist powder (pink) and a nebula purple with the glass finished with a matte finish under the glass giving the colours a softer look.

The OPPO Reno standard version will retail for 2999 yuan for the 6GB/128GB version, 3299 yuan for the 6GB/256GB version and 3599 yuan (AU$724) for the 8GB/256GB verison.

The Reno 10x zoom Pro version, which you are all interested in will start at 3999 yuan for the 6GB/128GB version, 4499 yuan for the 6GB/256GB version and 4799 yuan (AU$965) for the 8GB/256GB version. The Reno Standard Edition will be available for sale on April 19th and the Reno 10x Zoom Edition will be available for sale in mid-May.

Relevant for the Australian market is the 5G Pro version which will be ready in May of this year. Hopefully Telstra will already have one on their testing bench and will have it ready to go by the end of May.

I for one will be checking out the OPPO Reno 5G version when it arrives here and hope to put it through its paces and considering I have been critical of some of their software choices in the past I hope to be pleasantly surprised. Maybe this is the time that their software will match their top quality hardware.

Scott Plowman Editor

Scott is our modding guru - he has his finger on the pulse of all things ‘moddable’, pointing us towards all the cutting edge mods hacks that are available. When he’s not gymming it up, or scanning the heck out of Nexus devices, you'll find him on the Ausdroid Podcast.

Outside of Ausdroid, Scott's a health care professional and lecturer at a well known Victorian university.

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The hardware looks amazing, but any commitment to ongoing security and OS updates from OPPO? They’ve been abysmal in that area in the past, which is a major barrier to wanting to use their hardware (even ignoring the past issues with Color OS).